DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Friday, September 16, 2016

The Disgraceful Gitmo Exodus

As Barack Obama prepared to enter the final year of his presidency, he sat down for an interview with Olivier Knox to discuss a bold new policy change. He had announced a year earlier that the United States would be ending its decades-long isolation of Cuba and seeking rapprochement with the authoritarian Communists who run the island nation 90 miles from Florida. In this December 14, 2015, interview, Obama described his new approach in greater detail. The change he proposed dominated headlines for days.

There was other big news in the interview—though this the media didn't treat as such. The president declared that he remained committed to closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, despite strong objections from Republicans and some Democrats. Obama had campaigned in 2008 on closing Guantánamo and as one of his first acts upon taking the oath of office signed Executive Order 13492 directing his national security team to shutter the facility within a year:

Hillary Clinton Vows To ‘Stop The Raids And Roundups’ of Illegal Immigrants (GAWD what an idiot)

Hillary Clinton vows she would dramatically reduce the deportation of illegal immigrants if elected president, and expand President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty.

“We’re going to end family detention, close private detention facilities, and stop the raids and roundups,” she said during a speech at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington D.C.

Clinton vowed to defend Obama’s two executive amnesty programs DAPA and DACA, and promised to expand it if elected president. DACA gives amnesty for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children and DACA gives amnesty for their parents. But Clinton touted additional cases where she would unilaterally give illegal immigrants legalization.

“We need a simple, straightforward system where other people with sympathetic cases who are contributing to their communities can make their case and be eligible for deferred action too,” she said. “Like people who experience and report extreme labor abuses.”

Donald Trump snookered the mainstream media into holding 30 minutes of coverage of America’s top military heroes praising Trump!

John King-CNN- "We got played again by the Trump campaign".
Vince Coglianese - Trump mastery -- While waiting for birther statement, MSNBC has been holding for 30 minutes on our nation's heroes praising Trump.

Political Correctness Doesn't Only Threaten Speech

Many, including me, have lamented that political correctness, especially on university campuses, is undermining free speech. That's true, but I'm not sure that political correctness is the only culprit or that free speech is the only casualty.
Most of us have heard about "white privilege," "trigger warnings," "microaggressions" and "safe spaces." Let me provide rough definitions from an online dictionary and other websites. I'm sure that I could be accused of a microaggression for failing to be more precise, but I'm trying.
White privilege is the notion that whites have an advantage in getting societal benefits in Western countries, to the disadvantage of nonwhite people under the same social, political or economic circumstances. Trigger warnings are communications warning that the content of a text, video, etc., might upset or offend some people, especially those who have previously experienced a related trauma. Microaggressions are subtle but offensive comments or actions directed at a minority or other non-dominant group, often unintentionally or unconsciously reinforcing a stereotype. The original idea of safe spaces was that educational institutions should not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech. Therefore, certain places were designated as safe for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. The term has been expanded to protect all minorities.
Last year, just a few days before Halloween, there was a firestorm involving these concepts when a Yale University professor responded to an email sent to students by the university's Intercultural Affairs Council. The council had advised students not to wear costumes that would "threaten (the) sense of community" there.
Some students and faculty members took umbrage to the email because they considered it patronizing and also unnecessary because, in their view, it "had no applicability to the culture and the actual history" at Yale. But when professor Erika Christakis -- who was also an associate master of Silliman, one of Yale's residential colleges -- took exception to the email in her own email to Silliman students, many students, sadly, didn't receive Christakis' message with good cheer. Christakis wrote, "Have we lost faith in young people's capacity -- in your capacity -- to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?"
Instead of applauding her for vouching for their maturity, they interpreted it as inviting insensitivity to the experience of minorities. Some 700 people, including students, faculty and alumni, fired off an open letter in response to Christakis' email, saying, "In your email, you ask students to 'look away' if costumes are offensive, as if the degradation of our cultures and people, and the violence that grows out of it is something that we can ignore."
Christakis' husband, Nicholas, who was the master of Silliman, made the mistake of meeting with students and not sufficiently throwing his wife (and himself) under the bus for her email. Nicholas met with a large group of students, who surrounded him in the residential college quad. The encounter was captured on four videos, totaling some 24 minutes, and I watched the entire thing (titled "Yale Students and Nicholas Kristachis" on YouTube). To me, it is appalling and horrifying.
Christakis calmly, respectfully and cordially responded to one student after another, most of whom treated him with utter contempt and disrespect, used invectives, and demanded an apology for his wife's email. Several rebuked him for not remembering their first names from his previous interactions with them. When he acceded to their demands to say he was sorry for hurting their feelings and the pain it had caused them, they were unmoved. When they further demanded that he also acknowledge that the email created "space for violence to happen" and apologize for it, he drew the line, saying, "That I disagree with."
One student then said, "It doesn't matter whether you disagree." Another launched into an endless rude diatribe, and when Christakis tried to calmly respond when she'd paused, she cut him off, saying he shouldn't get to speak.
You will have to watch the video to get the full flavor of how hateful it was, how unreasonable the mob of students was and how patiently and calmly Christakis tolerated their bullying.
Shortly thereafter, about 1,000 students conducted a "March of Resilience" against an "inhospitable climate for people of color on campus." Then a smaller group submitted a list of demands to the university's president. It said the school must immediately implement "lasting policies that will reduce the intolerable racism that students of color experience on campus every day." Among other specific demands were that all undergraduates be required to take courses in the "Ethnicity, Race, and Migration" program, that mental health professionals be permanently established in each of the four cultural centers with discretionary funds, that the annual operational budget for each such center be increased by $2 million and that the Christakises be removed from their positions as master and associate master of Silliman College.
Believe it or not, despite the fact that there were no documented examples of racism giving rise to their complaints, the university surrendered and granted most of their demands.
Much has been written about the danger to free speech such events represent. There is no question that is the case. But I am far more concerned with what they reveal about the state of race relations in this country -- at least on college campuses -- and the messages we are sending to young people, namely:
--They are too fragile to deal with perceived, let alone actual, adversity.
--If a charge of racism is leveled against a "non-minority," it must be presumed valid, and the accused won't even be allowed, in some cases, to explain or deny it.
--Any perceived slight must be addressed, and all demands must be satisfied, no matter how unreasonable.
--We must be forever obsessed with race, gender and sexual preferences.
--Rudeness and disrespect will not be punished but will be rewarded.
The atmosphere on many college campuses on these issues is toxic. Those engaging in the indoctrination don't appear to seek improvement in race relations and don't appear to seek resolution.
Is it not obvious that a flagrant contradiction underlies these complaints? Those crying "racism" and "sexism" demand that they be treated equally and nondiscriminatorily, yet virtually every demand they make screams just the opposite. How can we be colorblind and color-obsessed at the same time?
Many people don't have the courage to address these issues, because they fear the mob would descend on them if they dared to challenge its claims. Yes, but if we keep pretending that the mob's claims are true and rolling over, things will only get worse. When can it possibly end?

Clinton stumbling in Democrat-friendly Michigan

Hillary Clinton’s lead in Michigan, regarded as a strong state for the Democratic nominee, is slipping.
Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump, 38-35 percent, in a new Detroit Free Press/WXYZ poll. Michigan has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. Libertarian Gary Johnson had 10 percent support, while the Green Party’s Jill Stein had 4 percent.
Trump’s gains have included white voters and men. Clinton was ahead by 2 last month while Trump now is ahead by 8. Clinton had a slight edge among men in August, but Trump is now up 5. Her backing in union households was down 8 points, while Trump’s was up 8.
Clinton also plunged with 18 to 34 year old voters. Her 24 point lead has shrunk to 7....

Good Walls Make Good Neighbors

The UK is building a wall to keep the denizens of the Calais "Jungle" migrant camp from invading cars and trucks after some 22,000 breaches of the port road. The “Jungle” is a nightmare for the local population which has been terrorized by the mob of migrants aspiring to invade the UK. he French have blamed the British and the British have blamed the French. But the migrant invasion is not the fault of either alone. In a sense it is the fault of everyone in the European Union.

David Limbaugh and Extolling the Never-Trumpers

What exactly are the high “conservative” principles of Romney and McCain that Trump has failed to express?
A few days ago David Limbaugh, a widely-syndicated Republican commentator (and Rush’s less fiery younger brother) posted a commentary intended to deescalate the tensions between Trump’s supporters and the “never-Trumpers.” Limbaugh defines himself as a “reluctant Trumper,” who decided to support the Donald as the lesser of two evils after his preferred candidate Ted Cruz stumbled in the primaries. Limbaugh does not hide his dislike for Trump’s free-wheeling rhetoric and believes that the GOP nominee’s critics on the right may be fully justified in doubting his “genuine commitment to conservative policies.”
Despite these doubts, Limbaugh endorses Trump for reasons that one also hears from Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Larry Elder, and yours truly. Trump has “many incentives to implement our [conservative] policies,” while Hillary Clinton has absolutely none. He is also, not incidentally, bestowing on the Republican Party a large working class constituency; and even among racial minorities, he is doing at least as well, and in the case of prospective black voters, better than his GOP centrist predecessors, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Moreover, it is hard not to see Trump’s focusing on the problems of illegals and sanctuary cities as anything other than a “conservative” issue. That remains the case even if most of his primary competitors and certainly the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal might wish those issues had never been brought into the primaries.

Economy: The latest annual report from the Harvard Business School on the state of U.S. competitiveness says political gridlock is getting in the way of strong economic growth. What it fails to mention is that Democrats are the ones blocking the pro-growth proposals the report advocates.
The latest HBS report paints a bleak but accurate picture of the current economy -- lackluster economic and productivity growth, an incredibly slow rate of job creation...
...no meaningful progress on the critical policy steps to restore U.S. competitiveness...
...Don't believe it? Look at the eight-point plan itself and ask yourself which party supports or opposes each:
Simplify the corporate tax code and lower the statutory rate. Move to a territorial tax system like all other leading nations. Ease immigration of highly skilled individuals. Aggressively address distortions and abuses in the international trading system. Improve logistics, communications and energy infrastructure. Simplify and streamline regulation. Create a sustainable federal budget, including reform of entitlements. Responsibly develop America's unconventional energy advantage.
...Obama never lifted a finger to enact the kind of corporate tax reforms...
...Trump's economic plan, in contrast, is far closer to what the HBS envisions...
...corporate tax reform the HBS report proposes...
He has called for streamlining regulation, and while his anti-trade rhetoric is worrisome, he at least has promised to get tough on countries that cheat on trade. Where Trump falls short is on immigration and entitlements.
The HBS is right that the U.S. economy is suffering from federal policies that impede growth and harm U.S. competitiveness. But attacking both political parties as if they share equally in the blame is unfair and unproductive.

#BlackLivesMatter Leader Robbed – Demands More Police Protection!

I certainly don’t want anyone robbed at gunpoint.
Not even to a local leader of the Black Lives Matters movement despite the Black Lives Matter movement having taken on an anti-police call to action.
There is great irony, however, when such a leader then also calls for more police protection, as happened recently in Houston with Jerry Ford, Jr.:

Drs. Elizabeth Lee Vliet and Jane Orient are finding inconsistencies in a letter written by Hillary Clinton’s doctor that claims the Democrat presidential nominee is recovering from “non-contagious bacterial pneumonia.”
Though neither Vliet nor Orient have personally examined Clinton, they’re giving Breitbart News some insights into a letter written by Dr. Lisa Bardack, the chair of Internal Medicine at CareMount Medical in Mount Kisco, New York, who said Clinton was being treated for “a mild non-contagious bacterial pneumonia” after becoming “overheated” during a 9/11 Memorial event when the nominee appeared to collapse and had to leave abruptly.

Democrats’ Deplorable Emails

If the 2016 election is remembered for anything...it will be...the Democratic email dump...
These emails provide...unfiltered evidence of what top politicians do and think... For years, Democrats have steadfastly portrayed Republicans as elitist fat cats who buy elections, as backroom bosses who rig the laws in their favor, as brass-knuckle lobbyists and operators who get special access. It turns out that this is the precise description of the Democratic Party...
The latest hack of the DNC...shows that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t alone in steering favors to big donors. Among the documents leaked is one that lists the party’s largest fundraisers/donors as of 2008. Matthew Barzun, who drummed up $3.5 million for Mr. Obama’s first campaign, was named ambassador to Sweden and then ambassador to the United Kingdom... The second largest...was named the head of the Federal Communications Commission. The third largest...was named undersecretary of commerce...
a May 18, 2016, email from an outside lawyer to DNC staffers...suggests a call to “go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters.” Add this to what the...emails have shown to be a massive pay-to-play operation at the Clinton Foundation, in which megadonors like the crown prince of Bahrain got special access...
So which political party is all about money, influence and special access? The Republican Party held a true, democratic primary. Seventeen candidates battled it out, and the voters choose a nominee that much of the party establishment disliked.
Leaked emails show that the Democratic Party hierarchy retreated to a backroom to anoint Hillary Clinton and then...subvert the primary...
This is the modern Democratic Party. The more it has struggled to sell its ideas...the more it has turned to rigging the system... Don’t take Republicans’ word for it. Just read the emails.